Rodney Koeneke's Blog, page 27

Rod Smith Tangent Intro, Portland, 5/23/09

“Excuse me officer, I thought/you were a shape-shifting rat.”

If there were some messy Planet of the Apes-like apocalypse, and this were the only line of Rod Smith’s to survive, the gorillas and chimps would still have a lot of Smith to love. They’d get a taste of his Johnny Rotten-meets-Bugs Bunny attitude to authority in all its wily disguises. They’d get the carefully careless attention to sound that marries “excuse” to “sir” and “rat” to “thought.” They’d have the surprising misdirection of

Nada Gordon Monday

“Boum.”[image error]

Forster Friday

“Boum.”[image error]

Tangent Reading this Saturday, 5/23: Jen Coleman, Mel Nichols & Rod Smith

Rod Smith and Mel Nichols are in Portland from DC, reading for Tangent this Saturday with former DCer (but now Portland’s own) Jen Coleman. Mel’s new book, Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon, will have its west coast launch. Feel free to stick around afterwards to meet and talk with the poets. (“Love Ya” puppet, sadly, stayed home. Security risk.)

Tangent presents
SATURDAY, MAY 23 at 7 PM
JEN COLEMAN, MEL NICHOLS & ROD SMITH
Clinton Corner Café, 2633 SE 21st Ave. (@ Clinton) Portland, OR

JEN CO

In the Chinese Gardens

“Keep in mind that true friendship extends beyond time and place.”[image error]

“Poetry” vs. “Poetic”

Gabe left a response to a recent post about where to find poetry suggesting that in talking about the subject, the term “poetic” may turn off fewer people than “poetry” does. “For whatever reason,” he writes, “there seems to be a certain stigma attached to the word ‘poetry’, while people seemingly use the word ‘poetic’ with a sense of freedom.” I wrote back:

I’m with you that “poetry” drags a lot of cultural freight in its train, while “poetic’s” gone feather-light and attaches itself to movies,

Beverly Dahlen & David Abel in Portland, 5/10/09

David Abel and Beverly Dahlen both opened their readings in Portland on Sunday with poems by Robin Blaser. The pieces they chose paid tribute to Blaser’s long life in poetry, but also set the tone for each reading. Abel picked “Dreams, April 1981” from Blaser’s Syntax, which tosses off references to Hesiod, Art Tatum, Shakespeare, and the CBC with an ease that marks Abel’s own blend of allusion, brainy punning, “sound imitations” (one memorable one of a slow movement from Brahms) and deep quotid

Epitaphics

Tarzan keeps saying, ‘ombawa,’
and everybody does everything
including the elephants

‘Wow!’ she said, ‘I’m out of the
rabbit hole and it’s the same.’

‘If there’s one thing Harry learned
to love more than the sacred, it was
the sacred in ruins.’

—Robin Blaser[image error]

May Readings in Portland

So many great readings coming up this month in Portland that it’s worth pulling them out of the sidebar and into a separate post.

Spare Room’s been on overdrive since their 100th reading celebration in January; this Sunday May 10, they’re bringing the legendary Beverly Dahlen, a Portland native, up from San Francisco to read with Portland’s tireless poet-of-all-trades David Abel.

The following Sunday May 17, poet and translator from the Sanskrit Andrew Schelling reads for Spare Room with Portland

Let's Go to the Bar, Part II (Golden Age)

“The proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to few; ‘tis impossible even for a good wit to understand and practice them without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digesting of those few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best company of both sexes; and in short, without wearing off the rust which he contracted, while he was laying in a stock of learning.”

—John Dryden, Preface to Sylva